Bittersweet holidays for Jewish evacuees

Last year at the start of Rosh Hashana, a hurricane evacuation sent him and a cantor at his tiny Biloxi, Miss., synagogue on an odyssey across the state to find a congregation where they could mark the Jewish New Year.

This year, as the High Holy Days begin tonight, Richer will once again be searching for a spiritual home. His Conservative synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, is one of many across the Gulf Coast that have been shuttered by extensive damage from Hurricane Katrina.

"I'm very happy to have this year over," Richer said. "We've had a lot of tragedy."

The 10-day period of repentance and renewal, among the most important in the Jewish calendar, arrives as Jewish evacuees are scattered throughout the country, their homes destroyed, their jobs gone and their future unclear.

Victims say the generosity of religious leaders in cities where they've sought refuge has helped ease discomfort about celebrating the holidays in an alien environment. Orthodox Jews have found housing for evacuees near congregations so they can observe the Jewish prohibition against driving on the High Holy Days. One Florida rabbi packed his Cessna with kosher meat and cheese, Sabbath candles and challah and flew the supplies to Biloxi, where members of Beth Israel may hold services at a military base. Other Jewish groups have sent prayerbooks, while Baptist, Roman Catholic and Unitarian churches have offered space for services.

Still, many displaced Jews say the pain of having lost everything will only be compounded by observing sacred rituals among strangers.

"I think the word is bittersweet," said Ruth Kullman, president of Touro Synagogue in New Orleans, a Reform congregation that was damaged and will not reopen for the holiday period, which ends with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Kullman, her husband and her 93-year-old mother-in-law fled to Memphis where Kullman's sister lives. "We're all so grateful to be here and together. We're just sad that we can't be celebrating the way we always had," she said.

Jewish leaders don't know when - if ever - their communities will reunite.

About 10,000 Jews lived in the New Orleans area and Eric Stillman, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, has been trying to track them. Working out of the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston, he has contacted about 1,400 of the 3,600 families who were in his organization's database. Synagogue leaders have started their own online lists, but many families still have not been reached.

"It's hard to predict," said Stillman, who fled New Orleans with his wife and two children. "Some people have said they're not going to come back. ... Some people have already returned."

Those able to get home have found their synagogues with smashed roofs, shattered windows, flooded basements, and mold and mildew growing in sanctuaries. As Katrina battered the region, anxiety spread among Jewish leaders about the Torah scrolls inside the buildings. The scrolls, which Jews believe contain the word of God, are the holiest objects in Judaism.

About a week following the storm, a caravan of Jewish volunteers, accompanied by armed officers from outside New Orleans, went into the city to retrieve the scrolls. Some members of the mission had to swim through floodwater to reach their buildings, but all the Torahs were retrieved intact.

Stillman drove about a dozen of the Torahs to Houston, where they will be used in worship over the next 10 days. Rabbis and cantors from New Orleans-area congregations will lead some of the services in college auditoriums, churches and other sites around the region.

Betty Zivitz, executive director of Congregation Temple Sinai, a New Orleans Reform synagogue of 850 families, said she was "trying to make as normal a holiday as possible."

"All of us are somewhat distracted. We're not going into the holiday season as we would have in the normal meditative state," Zivitz said.

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